Thanks for your perspective. To be completely honest, I would have much preferred to start from scratch too. But the reality is that the current marketplace system doesn’t reward anyone starting today. It forces you to the bottom and makes you completely invisible, while outdated plugins from 8 or 10 years ago permanently hold the top spots just based on legacy numbers. This is exactly why Alex is frustrated, and I understand that.
I’ve experienced this exact issue with all my other plugins, which took me years of hard work to grow organically. Right now, the ecosystem is completely crystallized, and there are simply no KPIs in the marketplace that reward better or newer plugins. In such a locked system, finding visibility feels almost impossible. This is, in my opinion, the whole point of this dispute and I completely agree with the need to change the way the marketplace works.
At the same time, this is Emmanuel’s point of view on the plugin marketplace: https://www.youtube.com/live/9GZ98pvVmNo?t=1082, which makes me very sad about the future of a business that took me years to develop.
I also think it’s completely against the spirit of the below policy, given you have paid plans for the plugin on your website. Reasonable people can debate whether it breaks the exact letter of the law:
I just wanted to say that I have contacted Bubble’s team to assess this whole situation and provide me with instructions on what to do on my side to ensure full compliance with their rules.
@fede.bubble@nick.carroll sorry to tag you guys directly, but would it be possible to get a response from Bubble on this thread?
I appreciate the plugin marketplace is far from your #1 priority, but this kind of manipulation of the rankings is pretty frustrating. And selfishly, it has a real impact on my business.
I’ve raised it with support but it felt like it kinda fell into a black hole.
Would be good to get some clarity and put it behind us.
I made a significant investment to legally buy that legacy asset under the rules currently in place. Forcing an installs reset now would basically mean throwing my own money out the window.
Just like you, I’ve already reached out to Bubble’s team directly to get an official ruling on this. I’m the first one who wants to know exactly what the ground rules are so we can finally put this behind us.
I would remove the part about ownership but keep the rest.
Your second point also makes sense, my suggestion would partially solve one problem but create another. Maybe there’s a way to get feedback on why a plugin is uninstalled while preventing the dozens of fake reviews clearly seen on many plugins. You know: a plugin is released and a minute later, there is a review saying, “This is the most amazing plugin in the universe.”
Anyway, these are just few suggestions that I think could improve the current process in some way.
Honestly, I don’t think what happened was fair. If this becomes acceptable, it will set a very dangerous precedent. It’s ridiculous to think that this could even be considered acceptable. It makes absolutely no sense for a plugin to keep the reviews it received when it served a completely different purpose. I honestly don’t even see why this should be up for debate.
Imagine taking a coffee shop with thousands of positive Google reviews and turning it into a plastic surgery clinic. It makes absolutely no sense for the clinic to keep all those previous 5-star reviews that were given to “the best cappuccino in town”.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I feel terrible about how this whole situation has unfolded.
I want to openly admit that I posted three fake 5-star reviews. I made a huge mistake, I am ashamed of it, and I am truly sorry. I managed to delete one of them myself, but the other two were made from apps that no longer exist, so I can’t remove them on my end. If the Bubble team can step in and delete them, I would really appreciate it, and I apologize once again for my unacceptable behavior on this front.
I honestly don’t care at all about the legacy plugin’s reviews. In fact, the reason I posted those fake ones is exactly because I believe the plugin I built is good and I felt the old rating was just too low. If Bubble decides to wipe out all the old reviews, I have absolutely no issue with that.
Overall, I want to apologize to anyone in the community who felt offended by this situation. That being said, I still believe that acquiring the plugin for its positioning (the installs count) was a legitimate business move, and that updating a free plugin with new free features does not break Bubble’s rules. Furthermore, the legacy functionalities are still 100% intact. Ultimately, all I did was add new, powerful capabilities to a free tool that the community can use at no cost (and that many are already actively using).
Ultimately, I really hope this whole situation prompts Bubble to rethink how the plugin marketplace works, and to introduce new mechanisms that finally give good new plugins the visibility they truly deserve.
Look, honestly, even though you’ve come forward to apologize publicly, and I genuinely think that took courage and deserves recognition, I don’t believe you would have done so if all of this hadn’t come to light. Either way, I respect the fact that you did .
That said, I also believe the installation count should be reset. To me, that’s an obvious requirement. The number of installations is primarily a trust and marketing metric. It signals that a plugin is mature, reliable, and widely adopted.
In your case, however, those installations came from users who downloaded the plugin for the icon library it provided, not for the PDF generation functionality that was introduced after the plugin’s purpose was completely changed. It’s not as though you simply added a powerful new feature. You fundamentally changed what the plugin is.
Keeping the original installation count gives the impression that thousands of people adopted this plugin for this purpose, when that’s simply not true. I find it very difficult to believe you don’t understand how ethically problematic that is.
I don’t know. I think @alexcooney5 had a great idea when first implementing the strategy @Cosmic.Steve implemented into his service. It was an innovative approach for bubble plugins, especially considering every other pdf plugin just used an API requiring subscriptions, so at least a bubble developer created a real tool to replace the 3rd party API…and basically what’s known as ‘the freemium model’
Only thing I think is wrong is the fake reviews on the plugin page and website.
I’m not against the model. However, claiming that these types of plugins are free is a stretch. The allotments given in the free tier are pretty much unusable for any real live application.
These plugins should have to be marked freemium like they do with plugins that collect user data, if they offer additional paid services inside them.
!! /s
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